Former porn star Brittni Ruiz, previously known by her stage name Jenna Presley, is a success story in terms of her turn to Jesus Christ and away from the porn industry. But in a recent interview, Ruiz describes the exact Bible verse that turned her life around from smut star to ministry leader.
"Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet," John the Apostle writes in Revelation 2:20. "By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds."
Ruiz read that verse while on a plane traveling to Las Vegas to film a porn scene during her turn back away from Christ. She was first introduced to the Lord by her grandparents when she hit rock bottom, but she briefly returned when she says she ran out of money. But even during that return, she felt the hand of God guiding her to bring that Bible with her on the plane.
"It was speaking about this adulteress woman. [It said] God had given her plenty of opportunities to repent ... and that God would cast her into hell and I was like, 'Oh my goodness. I'm the adulteress woman,'" she recalled. "'He's given me time to repent. What's my problem?'"
The interview with Ruiz, conducted by The Blaze, explores more of the story first made famous when Ruiz and her pastor at the XXX Church appeared on the talkshow The View in 2013. Ruiz says that she turned completely away from the sinful porn industry in December of 2012 for good after a difficult struggle leaving the first time.
"I've learned so much. My life before Jesus - it was treacherous. The sad thing is, I didn't know it was treacherous," she said. "I didn't know what joy was, what peace was - I didn't know how to be happy."
But the biggest hurdle for Ruiz in leaving the porn industry at first was leaving behind the friends she had made and the over 80,000 Twitter followers she had accumulated. In another recent interview with Breathecast, Ruiz says that she kept ties to her social media accounts for a while before realizing that she had to just go ahead and cut ties with every single link to her old life.
Ruiz deleted her Twitter account, changed her phone number, and purged everything she had under the "Jenna Presley" name. She described it as a situation similar to that of a recovering alcoholic going to a bar or liquor store for full closure. She recognized that to fully leave everything from that life and turn her life to Jesus, all temptation must be gone.
Two years later, Ruiz is working with the XXX Church doing the very thing that got her on the right path in the first place. The XXX Church, started by Pastor Craig Gross, attends porn conventions to minister to the lost who attend. Ruiz, being on the other end of that ministry at one time, is now the one spreading God's word to her former co-workers.
"I love them, they are close friends of mine, we talk often and that's pretty much what I do with them," she said.
But the question on most of our minds is regarding the awkwardness of describing her life in the porn industry as it relates to her testimony. Ruiz says that originally it was something she didn't talk about, but soon realized that her whole story can't be told without revealing the whole truth.
"When I first came to the Lord I wasn't going to tell anyone I was in the porn industry. I was just going to be this little office receptionist and I'm not going to tell anybody. I started to feel really convicted by the Holy Spirit and He was just talking to me and saying 'Picture Jesus on the cross, and His hands and the thorns and the crowns around His head. He was literally humiliated for you.' I pictured Jesus and it broke my heart. The Holy Spirit said, 'was that enough for you?' And I said, 'It's more than enough'. Then He said, 'How dare you be embarrassed of what He delivered you from. Help people, set people free'."
And as far as a message to spread to the lost youth of today who are taught that sexual impurity is OK, Ruiz says that we live in a God-less world.
"The world makes it seem like it is okay," she said. "Kim Kardashian has a sex tape. Paris Hilton has a sextape. These people are well known. They make it seem like it's the right thing to do. We live in a world that is almost godless. I didn't know God growing up. I was told by the world it's okay to have sex with your boyfriend, it's okay to test it out. It's not okay. I think that the best thing that we can do is keep spreading the truth."
